page_title: French battleship Paris
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: French battleship Paris / Construction and career / World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: The battleship Paris leaving Devonport
context_page_description: Paris was the third ship of four Courbet-class battleships, the first dreadnoughts built for the French Navy. She was completed before World War I as part of the 1911 naval building programme. She spent the war in the Mediterranean, spending most of 1914 providing gunfire support for the Montenegrin Army until her sister ship Jean Bart was torpedoed by the submarine U-12 on 21 December. She spent the rest of the war providing cover for the Otranto Barrage that blockaded the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Sea.
  Paris supported French and Spanish troops in 1925 during the Third Rif War before becoming a school ship in 1931. She was modernized in three separate refits between the wars even though she was not deemed to be a first-class battleship. She remained in that role until the Battle of France, which began on 10 May 1940, after which she was hastily rearmed. She supported Allied troops in the defence of Le Havre during June until she was damaged by a German bomb, but she took refuge later that month in England. As part of Operation Catapult, she was seized in Plymouth by British forces on 3 July.
context_section_description: Paris and Courbet formed a Fifth Squadron at the beginning of the war. They were transferred to the Atlantic to continue their training duties without interference. Both ships were ordered restored to operational status on 21 May 1940 by Amiral Mord and they were given six Hotchkiss 13.2-millimetre (0.52 in) twin machine gun mounts and two single 13.2-mm Browning machine guns at Cherbourg. Paris was ordered to Le Havre on 6 June to provide gunfire support on the Somme front and covered the evacuation of the town by the Allies, although the lack of spotting aircraft meant that she was not particularly effective in that role. Instead she helped to defend the harbour of Le Havre against German aircraft until she was hit by a bomb on 11 June. She sailed for Cherbourg that night for temporary repairs despite taking on 300 long tons (305 t) of water per hour. She was transferred to Brest on 14 June and carried 2,800 men when that port was evacuated on 18 June.
  In the wake of the Armistice, Paris was docked at Plymouth, England. On 3 July 1940, as part of Operation Catapult, British forces forcibly boarded her and she was used by the British as a depot ship and as a barracks ship by the Polish Navy for the rest of the war. On 21 August 1945, after the war had ended, Paris was towed to Brest where she continued in her role as a depot ship. She was sold for scrap on 21 December 1955 and broken up at La Seyne from June 1956.
caption: Paris leaving HM Dockyard, Devonport, July 1940
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